Elvis In The Holy Land

The Elvis Inn

The story of the place: It's on the road from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv (on
the right as you
go in that direction; on the left for the return trip), in a little town
called Abu Ghosh,
named after a fellow who lived there around the time of the Crusades who
collected a
toll from people for, uh, guaranteeing that as they passed through the
area they
wouldn't be attacked by bandits. (Not that he was a bandit himself, of
course. More like
a sheriff, actually. One of those sheriffs from a town where the speed
limit on the
interstate drops to 15 mph during tourist season. Just an honest man
trying to make
himself a living. Of course, if you didn't pay the toll . . .) I actually
have read articles
about the Elvis Inn itself, and though I've forgotten their contents
almost entirely,
there's a residue of some memory in there that makes me think this guy
started up the
place just because he happened to like Elvis a lot and thought it would
be cool to have
a place devoted to him. For one thing, it must be saving a lot of people
a trip to
Graceland. (And remember, outside of Memphis, Israel has the market
pretty much
cornered on lands in states of grace.)

Click on each photo to ENLARGE it

Well, on to the pictures, which will pretty much tell the story. Here's
the
first. Apologies for the backlighting, which takes some of the detail out
of
the statue's front. I was there right around sunset and squeezed these
off as
fast as I could, and I think there's still enough here to appreciate what
was
there, and what it was like to be there.
Here's photo number two. In case you're curious, on the sign on the left,
the
white sign with the outline of Elvis on it, the Hebrew word directly
above
Elvis' name in English is his name in Hebrew. (Hebrew reads right to
left,
incidentally, the opposite from English.) I could read more of these
signs
for you, but most of them just say in Hebrew pretty much the same thing
they
say in English right adjacent. The Hebrew opposite the sign for Golf
Lights,
for example says (literally) Golf Lights. I mean, it's not even
translated;
if you sound the letters out, that's exactly what you get.

Inside this shop, along with being able to get babaganoush, you can get
various Elvis Inn memorabilia--floater pens, postcards, that kind of
stuff.
The music on the speakers inside is pretty much All Elvis, All The Time,
as
you might guess.

This is probably the only Elvis souvenir shop in the world where you can
get
shwarma, actually.

Here's picture number three. Yeah, I'm the one [Doug Bradley] standing in
front
of the statue, looking like a cross between a meaningless shadow and a
total
geek. I actually tinkered around with the image a bit in PhotoShop to try
to
bring out any more detail, but there's just nothing there. And the
results
when you started seeing more of my face weren't pleasant, so I decided to
leave it tactfully in the shadows.

You do get the sun going down over the Holy Land, though. In case you
were
wondering, that's facing roughly southwest. The main road from Tel Aviv
to
Jerusalem would be in the background, but it's down in the crease of this
valley, and the Elvis Inn is up above it. The Elvis Inn, by the way, is
approximately in the parking lot of GlobusLand, Israel's version of
Universal
Studios. (Golan-Globus is one of Israel's biggest production companies;
they
actually do a lot of American films, like I think some Schwarzenegger or
maybe some other action-hero films.)